The way of all flesh
By: by Samuel Butler
Series: The modern library of the world's best books; Modern library of the world's best books
Publisher: Boni and Liveright
Published: 1917
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 410
Subjects: Fiction; English fiction
Description: Samuel Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood shines an iconoclastic light on the hypocrisy of a Victorian clerical family's domestic life. It also foreshadows the crumbling of nineteenth-century bourgeois ideals in the aftermath of the First World War, as well as the ways in which succeeding generations have questioned conventional values. Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement," this chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex spans four generations, focusing chiefly on the relationship between Ernest and his father, Theobald. Written in the wake of Darwin's Origin of Species, it reflects the dawning consciousness of heredity and environment as determinants of character. Along the way, it offers a powerfully satirical indictment of Victorian England's major institutions&#x2014;the family, the church, and the rigidly hierarchical class structure.
Notes: Novel.

Author lived in New Zealand.

Originally published: Grant Richards, 1903.